You can’t swing a dead cat these days without hitting a Bill Gates non-profit | Lady Liberty 1885

You can’t swing a dead cat these days without hitting a Bill Gates non-profit | Lady Liberty 1885:

You can’t swing a dead cat these days without hitting a Bill Gates non-profit

…Or a former NC Department of Public Instruction (DPI) employee working for a Bill Gates  backed non-profit.

Case in point, Tabitha Grossman of Hope Street Group.

Who is Hope Street Group?

In case you missed my previous articles on Hope Street Group, they are, in a nutshell, a Bill Gates backed non-profit using a ‘Teacher Voice Network’ to continue pushing Common core. They are a resident of what I call the Common Core Potemkin Village.

North Carolina’s Superintendent is quite cozy with Hope Street and has entered NC into a partnership with them in March of this year.

More on that partnership in a separate article. Back to Tabitha Grossman.

Ms. Grossman has been the “National Director for Education Policy and Partnerships” for Hope Street Group since June of 2013. Here is where she was and what she did prior to that, via her LinkedIn resume:

Program Director National Governors Association June 2011 – November 2012 (1 year 6 months)

Senior Policy Analyst National Governors Association September 2008 – June 2011 (2 years 10 months)

Director, Learn and Earn Early College High Schools North Carolina Department of Public Instruction September 2007 – September 2008 (1 year 1 month)Raleigh, NC

Gee, a former NC DPI employee. Grossman’s next step was the National Governor’s Association (NGA) right at about the time Common Core was being created.

According to her NGA bio, she was in the thick of it with Common Core and ‘human capital’:

“she is currently working with governors and their key policy staff to help them assess and address the impact of the Common Core State Standards on human capital policy.”

While at the NGA, Grossman was tasked with training informing Governors about Common Core by providing them talking points, action plans in a report that “was made possible by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.”

Fun footnote: If you read page 24 of that NGA report Grossman was a part of, you’ll see it also mentions the ‘Shared Learning Collaborative. That collaborative was renamed You can’t swing a dead cat these days without hitting a Bill Gates non-profit | Lady Liberty 1885:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Let's Talk SBAC Scores - Part One

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Let's Talk SBAC Scores - Part One:

Let's Talk SBAC Scores - Part One

My apologies for taking so long to get to this.  Our discussion on SBAC will take three threads.  One, an overview.  Two, what was said at Superintendent Dorn's press conference last week on the results.  Three, some topline impressions from looking at the scores.  (If anyone has been looking at the scores in-depth, let me know.  I'm probably not going to be able to deep-dive them myself so any impressions you have would be helpful.)

Overview

The most basic takeaway - both from Dorn and others touting the Washington state scores - is a big fat WHEW.  The scores were not nearly as bad as they could have been.  We can debate why that might be later on.

One big consideration is the difference between states using SBAC and those using PARCC.  Sixteen states (and what are called "affiliate" states) are using SBAC and 11 states and D. C. are using PARCC.  ( To note: PARCC had been in 26 states and the drop to 11 caused the Boston Globe to say the test is in a "death spiral.")  Other states are using their own tests or some tweaked version of either SBAC or PARCC.

They are two different tests.  To compare the test scores against each other is going to be apples and oranges and that's why I was surprised to hear a Seattle Schools principal brag about how much better Washington State did than NY State when Washington is an SBAC state and NY State is not.

SBAC has created its own cut scores but states are free to make their own.  (Vermont and New Hampshire abstained from the vote on approval of SBAC cut scores.)  From Ed Source:

Under NCLB, cut scores “led to dysfunctional behavior” in which school districts focused their attention on “bubble kids” – raising scores of those right below the cut score while ignoring those further below or above the line, she said. Schools would not get credit when students showed growth within achievement levels from year to year or when scores grew significantly but fell short of proficient.

One thing to keep in mind, no matter the actual scores, is this from an Ed Source article in Jan. 2015 on California (which also just started taking the SBAC test):

“Let’s be frank: All scores will be shifted to the left,” he said, meaning lower on the point scale, with fewer students deemed to be proficient than under the old state standards and more students scoring at basic or below basic levels. “We have to educate parents about that. It’s not that your kid got dumber; there has been a shift in systems.”

I think that's probably quite true.  You cannot expect a shift in both WHAT is Seattle Schools Community Forum: Let's Talk SBAC Scores - Part One:

The Unionville Times » Op/Ed: The cost disease in K-12 public education

The Unionville Times » Op/Ed: The cost disease in K-12 public education:
Op/Ed: The cost disease in K-12 public education

What every school board director, school administrator, teacher, staff member, parent, and taxpayer needs to know

By Michael T. Rock[1], Samuel and Etta Wexler Professor of Economic History, Bryn Mawr College

Michael T. Rock

Every year school Boards in Pennsylvania like mine, the Unionville Chadds Ford School District, grapple with how to set next year’s school district budget. Historically, annual increases in expenditures have exceeded the rate of inflation.

Politicians, taxpayers and ordinary citizens often rail against this expenditure history blaming teachers, particularly their unions, poor management by school administrators (waste, fraud and abuse) and unwieldy pension obligations. Citizens, particularly those without children in public school, also rail against the unremitting rise in property taxes in school board meetings and in newspaper editorials. The media too is carried along by this rising crescendo of complaints about increasing school costs and tax burdens.

It is time we level with ourselves and the public. This problem is not going away because we are subject to a structural problem—the cost disease[2]. You can see evidence of the cost disease in  health care (figure 1), legal services (figure 2), in higher education (figure 3) and in K-12 public education (figure 4). What each of these figures show is that costs in these sectors rise faster than the rate of inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI)—when costs rise faster than inflation we get the cost disease.

What causes the cost disease? Part of the problem is that education is a people intensive or labor intensive activity. Unfortunately, it is devilishly difficult to increase productivity in people intensive activities. In K-12 public education the most readily available ways to do so are to increase class size and turn to online instruction. Most public schools and parents are loath to increase class size. While many public schools have some online courses, they are not likely to spread far enough to make a big enough productivity difference.

In the absence of productivity increases the only way to increase real (inflation adjusted) compensation (wages plus benefits) per school employee is to raise costs at some rate faster than the rate of inflation. If we want real compensation per employee to rise at 1% per year, than real school costs will rise at close to roughly 1% per year plus the rate of inflation per year[3]. If the rate of inflation is 3% per year, then costs will rise by roughly 4% per year. This is the cost disease.

What options do school districts have to mitigate the cost disease? We face three cruel choices. We can increase productivity by increasing class size and shifting more and more of our classrooms to online instruction. We can take a hard line on compensation (salary and benefit) increases for all school employees. In the extreme, we could keep annual increases in compensation per employee below the annual rate of inflation. This would cause real (inflation adjusted) compensation per employee to fall over time. Or we could limit the annual increases in compensation to the rate of inflation keeping real (inflation adjusted) compensation constant over time. Both of these options could mitigate the cost disease. But they come at the cost of educational quality because declining or constant real compensation per employee is likely to drive away our best administrators, teachers and support staff. Finally, we can sustain educational quality by increasing real compensation per employee by some percent over the rate of inflation. This will cause the cost disease and it is the very thing that politicians, taxpayers and ordinary citizens rail against. It is also the very thing that Act 1 was designed to protect against.

If long run declines in educational quality in K-12 public education are not politically acceptable can we to afford to pay for it by continually raising tax rates? The answer is probably yes. If our standard of The Unionville Times » Op/Ed: The cost disease in K-12 public education: 

From the Web: The Right to Public Ed in NOLA - Living in Dialogue

From the Web: The Right to Public Ed in NOLA - Living in Dialogue:

From the Web: The Right to Public Ed in NOLA

Karen Royal (3:00 in) on the rights of New Orleans parents to send their children to neighborhood public schools, ten years after Hurricane Katrina.From the Web: The Right to Public Ed in NOLA - Living in Dialogue:

CURMUDGUCATION: Dyett High Hunger Strike: Things To Know

CURMUDGUCATION: Dyett High Hunger Strike: Things To Know:

Dyett High Hunger Strike: Things To Know

Today, the twelve parents engaged in a hunger strike in support of Dyett High School in the Chicago southside neighborhood of Bronzeville are marking their first full week of their action. Here are some things to know.

What Is This About?

In 2012, Chicago Public Schools decided to close Dyett, allowing the last freshman class to finish their education there if they wished. Only a handful wished (and they were reportedly pressured by CPS to wish differently), but they're done, and the time has come to decide what Dyett will become.

There are three proposals out there.

First, an arts and design academy to be run by Little Black Pearl, an arts group that has shown no particular expertise in running charter schools. I would provide a link, but for whatever reason, all attempts to get to littleblackpearl.org a 403 forbidden message. Second, an athletics-based school backed by Dyett principal Charles Campbell. The Sun-Times also links a Mark Coleman to the proposal as a guy who runs a nonprofit, but I can't find anything about him. I can, however, find aMark Coleman who runs a media company that specializes in lining up financing for big projects-- that Mark Coleman lists Barack Obama and Ari Emmanuel as his "influencers," but that could be some other Mark Coleman. The athletics school proposal came in after the CPS deadline for proposals.

The third proposal, the Dyett Global Leadership and Green Technology High School, came from the community itself, early and complete with a partnership with DuSable University, Chicago Botanical Gardens and others. You can read the whole proposal here.

(Nobody, it should be noted, is proposing a group of robust charters so that the people of Bronzeville can have many excellent local choices.) 

Um, Wait a Minute

In a poor, black neighborhood of Chicago, there's an outside proposal for entertainment industry, an outside proposal for sports, and a community proposal for science, technology and CURMUDGUCATION: Dyett High Hunger Strike: Things To Know:

DIARY OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER!: How Can We #Rethink Discipline?

DIARY OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER!: How Can We #Rethink Discipline?:

How Can We #Rethink Discipline?

On July 22, 2015 educators gathered at the White House to Rethink School Discipline.

"The conference sought to advance the national conversation about reducing the overuse of unnecessary out of school suspensions and expulsions and replacing these practices with positive alternatives that keep students in school and engaged in learning, but also ensure accountability."

As I participated in the Twitter conversation #rethinkdiscipline, I began to think about ways we could avoid reaching the point where we have to suspend students. Just as we find ways to prevent illness using preventive measures, there are preventive methods we can use to reduce suspensions and expulsions. These methods are not a cure-all, but it can help stem the tide.

Build a relationship with your students

I think Rita Pierson said it best in her TedEd talk, "Kids don't learn from people they don't like."  Teachers do not have to be a child's best friend. But we do have to show them that we care. Compassion and empathy are great tools to use in the classroom.

We are not going to like all of our students, but we don't have to let them know it. Can you imagine being a child, who comes to school every day, knowing that your teacher doesn't like you? Many of us have felt that way about some of our students, but we can't let them feel it. Rita also stated, "James Comer says that no significant learning can occur without a significant relationship." Take a little time to find out about their circumstances, that may bring some comprehension to why the child is behaving in a negative manner.

Give students ownership

It's time to let go of the traditional, "This is my classroom, and you will do as I say".. You do not have to relinquish your authority to the point where your classroom is in chaos, students appreciate structure. A teacher-friend of mine had trouble with a student all year. She stated, "We were in a constant power struggle, I was not going to let him win!" Think about the war DIARY OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER!: How Can We #Rethink Discipline?:

Why so many teachers quit, and how to fix that - LA Times

Why so many teachers quit, and how to fix that - LA Times:

Why so many teachers quit, and how to fix that

Every year, thousands of young and enthusiastic teachers all over the country start their first day of work. Within the following five years, at least 17% of them will leave the profession. Teacherattrition is especially high in poor, urban schools, where on average about a fifth of the entire faculty leaves annually — that's roughly 50% higher than the rate in more affluent schools.

Not only is recruitment and retraining expensive, costing the United States about $2 billion each year, but research also shows that teacher stability is crucial for building strong relationships between staff and students. Reducing attrition among new hires is especially urgent in California, where about a third of teachers are expected to retire in the next 10 years. Meanwhile, fewer graduates are lining up to replace them. In 2001, 77,700 graduates were enrolled in teaching programs in California. By 2012, that number had dropped to 19,933.

What's pushing so many teachers out of the profession? Richard Ingersoll, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has been trying to answer that question for years. He's found that teachers often cite long hours and low pay as contributing to their dissatisfaction. But teachers are even more upset by their lack of say over key decisions affecting classrooms. Volumes of other research echo this theme. In a 2014 Gallup Poll, teachers ranked last among 12 professional groups in agreeing that their opinion at work matters.



Politicians have tried to solve the country's teacher attrition problem by giving bonuses to teachers working in high-poverty schools or tying pay to standardized test scores. But recent research shows that such approaches have been mostly unsuccessful. Perhaps giving teachers more power could make a difference where other interventions have not.Why so many teachers quit, and how to fix that - LA Times:

‘Most Likely to Succeed,’ by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith - The New York Times

‘Most Likely to Succeed,’ by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith - The New York Times:

‘Most Likely to Succeed,’ by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith

Here, then, is yet another book about success. This time it’s not grit that helps children succeed. Nor is it having a Tiger Mom or letting children walk home alone or allowing them to skin their knees or teaching them Arabic or Mandarin. It’s not about supporting their spiritual development or eliminating the gluten in their diets or teaching them about white privilege or the importance of team sports. No, this new tract aimed at the heart of parental anxiety — “Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era,” by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith — argues that the only way to ensure any kind of future security for our children is to totally upend the education system and rethink what school is for.

“Disrupt” is a buzz word these tech-world gurus use sparingly, but that’s what they mean. Wagner works at Harvard’s Innovation Lab, Dintersmith in venture capital, funding education and tech start-ups. Both appear frequently on the lecture circuit; you can almost see the ­PowerPoint peeking out from beneath their prose. Their argument is this: Public education in America is based on antiquated late-19th-century priorities, on the need “to educate large numbers of immigrants and refugees from farms for basic citizenship and for jobs in a growing industrial economy.” Most of the stuff children are forced to know, and on which our culture’s sense of achievement is based, is unnecessary in the age of Google. But tests and test-makers still run the show, and kids are required to “jump through hoops” and drill and drill to assimilate reams of facts (“content”) instead of learning the skills that will keep them employed and employable for years to come — which is to say, the skills to be entrepreneurs.

After the revolution Wagner and Dintersmith imagine, college will no longer be a scandalously expensive universal requirement but an option for only the most academically minded. They propose an overhaul of the SAT scoring system in which adolescents would be sorted into categories of collegiate preparedness: “In Good Shape,” “It Won’t Be Easy” and “Think Different.” Those in the last two categories might be satisfied, and indeed better served, in free or low-cost apprenticeships or by taking vocational courses.

It’s clear that American education overemphasizes test scores and grade-point averages at the expense of the deep curiosity and creativity that characterize real learning. Many of the disruptions the authors suggest — an interdisciplinary approach; hands-on, project-based learning; student-directed curriculums — are already in place in some of the country’s best schools. Less convincing is the assumption that undergirds this whole tract: that every person can — or should — be molded into an entrepreneur.

Is an entrepreneurial mind-set really the key to success? Will a culture that ‘Most Likely to Succeed,’ by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith - The New York Times:

Esther J. Cepeda: Ending the school-to-prison pipeline - San Jose Mercury News

Esther J. Cepeda: Ending the school-to-prison pipeline - San Jose Mercury News:

Esther J. Cepeda: Ending the school-to-prison pipeline

CHICAGO -- A recent poll seems to imply that the general public does not understand, and maybe has never heard of, the school-to-prison pipeline.

It is a national trend in which children -- more often than not, minorities -- are caught up by "zero-tolerance" public school policies that criminalize minor infractions of school rules.

In the past, such violations might have been handled by the principal. But the increase of law enforcement staff in schools has led to outsized punishments that set children at risk for further run-ins with the law and, ultimately, landing in the juvenile and criminal justice systems.

In February, The Civil Rights Project at UCLA reported that across the country, an overreliance on suspensions to maintain discipline in public schools has led to U.S. kids losing almost 18 million days of instruction.

In terms of expulsions, the Civil Rights Data Collection, compiled by the U.S. Department of Education, shows that while in 2011-12, black students made up just 15.9 percent of the total student population, they represented 36 percent of students who were expelled.

Additionally, black students were 34.6 percent of those subjected to corporal punishment, 30.1 percent of those arrested at school and 27.4 percent of those referred to law enforcement.

This led the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education to publish a "Dear Colleague" letter in January 2014. It reiterated that school disciplinary policies can be determined by individual school districts, but: "Federal law prohibits public school districts from discriminating in the administration of student discipline based on certain personal characteristics. The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division (DOJ) is responsible for enforcing Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibits discrimination in public elementary and secondary schools based on race, color, or national origin, among other bases."

Last week, the Education Next journal of opinion and research, along with the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard's Kennedy School, released its ninth annual poll on education policies.

One of the survey questions asked a nationally representative sample of 4,083 adults whether they "support or oppose school district or federal policies that prevent schools from expelling or suspending black and Hispanic students at higher rates than other students."

The results were shocking. Fifty-one percent of the public opposed federal "no-disparate-impact" policies, with 21 percent supporting and 29 percent neither supporting nor opposing. Among teachers, opposition to no-disparate-impact discipline was even higher, with 59 percent opposed and only 23 percent in support. Higher levels of support for the federal policy were observed among African-Americans, with 42 percent in favor and only 23 percent opposed. But among Hispanics, only 32 percent of respondents supported the policy and 43 percent opposed it. Only 14 percent of whites favored the policy, while 58 percent expressed opposition.

I think people don't understand the issue at hand: We want kids to behave in classrooms so that teachers can teach and students can learn, but we must achieve that through methods Esther J. Cepeda: Ending the school-to-prison pipeline - San Jose Mercury News:

Adorable GoPro Video Shows The First Day Of School From A Kindergartner's Perspective

Adorable GoPro Video Shows The First Day Of School From A Kindergartner's Perspective:

Adorable GoPro Video Shows The First Day Of School From A Kindergartner's Perspective

Happy New Year! #backtoparkway

Remember what it was like to go to school for the very first time? We strapped a GoPro camera on a kindergartner to see it from her perspective! Take a look! #backtoparkway #parkway360

Posted by Parkway School District on Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Parents typically want to know how their children's first days of school went, but often receive no more than one-word answers like "fine" and "OK." This video from Parkway School District in St. Louis gives viewers a glimpse into the first day of kindergarten, from the perspective of a real student. 

Six-year-old Adrianna wore a GoPro camera on her first day of kindergarten at Craig Elementary on August 12 and captured highlights like the bus ride, the warm welcome from faculty and administrators and new cubbies.

"From a parent's perspective, we forget how little these kids are, especially kindergarteners," said Adrianna's father Derek Duncan, who works as a digital communications specialist at Parkway School District. "So it was very cool to see what everything looks like to her when us adults are towering over her. Everything is just so big. It takes bravery to do things it would seem."

Duncan said his daughter loved wearing the camera, and her favorite moment from the day was seeing the bubble machine as she walked into school. 

Beyond the fun aspects of the video, the dad hopes people who watch it try to think about what it's like to be a child embarking on a new adventure. "As parents and educators, it's crucial to try to see the world through your kids eyes."

So true. 

Also on HuffPost:Adorable GoPro Video Shows The First Day Of School From A Kindergartner's Perspective:

Quotes from the governor, or when will Statehouse tolerance for failed charter schools finally run out? - Editorials - Ohio

Quotes from the governor, or when will Statehouse tolerance for failed charter schools finally run out? - Editorials - Ohio:

Quotes from the governor, or when will Statehouse tolerance for failed charter schools finally run out?

John Kasich wasn’t as harsh as he has been in the past. While participating in an “education summit” last week, the governor told Campbell Brown of “The 74” advocacy group, that if he were king, he “would abolish all teachers’ lounges where they sit together and worry about ‘woe is us.’ ” This was part of arguing that teacher unions engage in “constant negative comment.” Perhaps they recall how the governor talked not too long ago about how he would “break the back” of teacher unions.

That didn’t work out well, voters rejecting the governor’s plan to remake the state collective bargaining law. Which may help to explain another comment from the interview. The governor lamented how we pay a college football coach $4 million and pay teachers “peanuts.”

Will the governor soon begin crafting a plan to raise the pay of teachers? A rough calculation finds that a pay raise of $10,000 per public school teacher would translate into an added expense of $1 billion a year, or one-fifth of the $5 billion in tax cuts he often touts.

If that plan isn’t likely, consider another moment from the interview, the governor declaring: “We’re not going to tolerate failed charter schools.” That statement invites a chuckle, or a deep groan, from those who have watched the governor and his fellow Republicans at the Statehouse show much tolerance, proving slow to apply the accountability and oversight they heap on traditional public schools.

Republicans long have balked even as evidence has mounted about poor academic performance and misspending public dollars, the total the state routes to charter schools now at $1 billion per year. Dave Yost, the state auditor, has reported that one-half of the findings made by his office have involved charter schools. He examined attendance rates at a sample of charter schools and found a pattern of troubling discrepancies.

Finally, this year, the Statehouse began to act, pushed, in part, by high-performing charter schools weary of the taint. The governor proposed changes in his budget plan. The House approved legislation that advanced the cause of enforcing higher standards. Then, the Senate took a leap forward, Democrats and Republicans giving overwhelming support to legislation that promises to address failings that have made Ohio a national laughing stock.

Where does the bill sit? In the House, its leadership rejecting quick acceptance of the Senate changes, appearing to listen first to charter operators who write big campaign checks. The delay continues in the wake of revelations about a state education official doctoring evaluations of some charter schools.

What should a governor who won’t tolerate failed charter schools do? Come back from the presidential campaign trail and insist that the legislation get to his desk so he can sign it.

Click here to read or leave a comment(s) on this story.Quotes from the governor, or when will Statehouse tolerance for failed charter schools finally run out? - Editorials - Ohio:

Ongoing student churn staggers charter schools and the Kansas City district | The Kansas City Star

Ongoing student churn staggers charter schools and the Kansas City district | The Kansas City Star:

Ongoing student churn staggers charter schools and the Kansas City district

Sixteen years ago, the first charter schools opened in Kansas City with the promise of ending a student exodus from the city’s public schools.

But state data recently obtained by The Star show that mission has failed, leaving hundreds of students to spiral between district and charter schools in a public education system still losing children.

“We’ve created our own mess,” said Danny Tipton, superintendent of Hogan Preparatory Academy, a charter school. “The mobility rate is so incredibly high. We’ve reached a tipping point.”

Just in the past year, more than a thousand students left the district for charters, but an additional 500-plus left charters for the district, many during the middle of the school year.

Betzabet Valverde is one of many former students who needs two hands to count her schools and all the wrong turns among the opportunities set before her.

“I took the easy way,” she said with lingering regret.

The 22-year-old bailed out when infractions and detentions mounted at Allen Village charter school, bouncing through Westport Middle School, Alta Vista charter school and alternative programs at Seton Center and Hope Academy — when she went to school at all — before she righted herself.

“I was making wrong choices,” she said.

Charter schools, which are independent public schools with their own boards, now make up 40 percent of public school enrollment in the district. But their rise has not stemmed the combined fall in enrollment from 36,353 in 2000, the first year of charters in Kansas City, to 24,435 in 2015.

The number of school-age children living in the district, whether in public, private or home school, has fallen by U.S. census estimates from 43,356 in 2005 to 34,164 in 2014.

The exodus is seen in state data that show more than 2,500 children entering kindergarten in district and charter schools every year, but only 975 combined in the senior classes of the high schools.

Attrition has long hurt the Kansas City school district, but charter schools have not been able to break the fall. In fact, the erosion of enrollment from kindergarten to 12th grade is worse in the charter system. Its enrollment shrinks by 76 percent from kindergarten to 12th grade, compared with 51 percent for district schools.

“I feel like they’re trying to weed out the bad apples,” Kansas City parent Botreece Dunn said of some charter schools.

This year she pulled her seventh-grade daughter out of the charter Kauffman School. Dunn said its long days and intense rules had troubled her daughter “to the point she didn’t want to go to school.”

It’s an anxious time, though, as they try the district’s Northeast Middle School.

“I’m not very comfortable with it,” she said.

Many students, records show, move out of charters even in the middle of the school year — which adds to the strain on the district, which receives and places students at all ages, at all times from near and far.

The state takes two enrollment counts each school year, the official count for October and then a second for February. In 2014-2015, charter enrollment overall declined by 192 students between October and February. The district’s net gain was 194.

None of several families interviewed by The Star who have changed schools said they were pushed out of their schools. In most cases, they said, they were urged to stay.

“But there are feelings in things not said,” said LaQuanda Carpenter, the superintendent of the now-closed charter Hope Academy, which had tried to serve as an alternative school focused on recovering dropout students.

Many of their students had been through five or six schools before arriving at Hope, which its board president, Alvin Brooks, called the “school of last resort.”

“It’s the way they are made to feel when they come into those school offices,” Carpenter said. “A lot do feel discouraged.”

The families without exception like the power to choose schools in Kansas City. Many find better opportunities and it pressures schools to perform better.

But then comes the backlash that Hogan’s Tipton described as families navigate an imperfect system.

“Kansas City saw the same thing when (the district) did away with neighborhood schools,” Tipton said. “You get mad here and you go there. You get mad here and you go there. Now you add 20-plus charter schools and it exacerbates mobility. Kids go in and out all the time.”

Gauging performance

When it comes to school performance, the advantage falls to those charter schools that structure themselves against the high transience of the rest of the public school system.

The success of charter schools such as Academie Lafayette, University Academy and the Kauffman School is well documented, but those schools also take few or no new students beyond the schools’ earliest grades.

“The challenge for charter schools is how to structure enrollment patterns to meet the needs of students,” said Aaron North, vice president of education at the Kauffman Foundation.

An individual charter school does not have the flexibility of a district’s system, he said.

As a group, charter schools need to create the same kind of opportunities that the district can provide with specialties like its successful but selective-admission Lincoln College Preparatory Academy, or the audition-requiring Paseo Academy for Fine and Performing Arts, North said.

The Kauffman School reaches into city ZIP codes with the most need. The Kauffman enrollment begins at the fifth grade, but many students start far behind. Its college prep program has to begin at that age, and few students get in any later.

The problem, though, is that the choices in charter schools are full of gaps, particularly at the high school level, where options grow more limited.

Only 15.6 percent of the city’s charter students are in high schools, compared with 25.6 percent for the district and 30.3 percent for all other Jackson County school districts.

The heightened expense of facilities and programming in high schools is proving “a tough nut to crack for everyone,” North said.

Academie Lafayette, one of the most popular kindergarten-to-eighth-grade charter schools, is still struggling for a viable high school expansion after most of a decade of trying.

University Academy superintendent Tony Kline knows the stress on families.

When a group of young parents of soon-to-be kindergartners toured the K-12 grade school earlier this year, they told him they had several appealing elementary options, but they were looking far ahead, worrying about high school.

“I wanted to be realistic with them,” Kline said. If they wanted to be in University Academy for high school, their best chance was to get their children in as kindergartners.

The school will sometimes enroll students in later grades, but it has structured its capacity to support fewer numbers in the upper grade levels.

The college prep program wants a 13-year commitment from families, he said.

“We’re not testing kids coming in, but what we’re trying to show is that if you do something well, your kids will end up in the same place as a selective school.”

Into the whirlpool

The system can struggle, however, to gather those students who fall back into an educational whirlpool.

Valverde, who is working at restaurants and raising two daughters, had even slipped out of school at her crisis point, feeling too far behind. And she was pregnant. She stepped away from teachers who she now says were trying to help her at Allen Village and Alta Vista, finally getting back and graduating via the Seton Center school and Hope Academy.

Juan Yeverino, 21, now at Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley, said he made a wrong turn when he switched schools rather than repeat the sixth grade at Allen Village.

“I told myself, ‘I am not a dropout,’” he said.

The district collects many of the students who change schools. So do some charter high schools like Hogan and Alta Vista. But with Hope closed, DeLaSalle Education Center is the sole alternative charter high school serving students who haven’t succeeded in traditional school settings.

Many of the displaced students head for the school district, where roughly 40 percent of its students transfer in or out during the course of a school year, said Tonia Gilbert, executive director of student support and community services for Kansas City Public Schools.

“If you come through that door,” she said, “we will take you.”

The district tries to accommodate school-searching families by offering a variety of schools to choose from within the district, interim superintendent Al Tunis said.

The district and its board also have taken a more cooperative approach with charter schools in recent years, establishing some partnerships.

What Kansas City has lacked, Kline said, “is a comprehensive, citywide strategy.” The district and charters need to collaborate to better provide school choices that meet a wider range of needs with “a portfolio of options,” Kline said, “like a salad bar.”

Eloria Walker, 52, hopes her most recent educational choice sticks. Her 16-year-old daughter, the youngest of her seven children, switched this year to the district’s Paseo Academy from a charter school.

Walker didn’t just change schools over the years, but districts, from Raytown to Hickman Mills to Kansas City, always concerned about getting good teachers, but even more about safety.

“This is a new era,” she said. “It’s a different time. I’m just glad it’s almost over for me. I’m really tired.”

STUDENT MOBILITY SUMMIT

Mayor Sly James and the early-reading program Turn the Page KC will gather Sept. 1 with educators and community leaders for a daylong summit at the Kauffman Foundation to hear research on student mobility and work toward a community response.

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